Fans of American Idol may be a bit perplexed to note that the skinny kid with the terrible voice and uber-feminine haircut continues to be a presence on the show from week to week.  How is Sanjaya Malakar surviving each elimination?  Sanjaya is not particularly talented.  Sanjaya is not particularly attractive (except, perhaps, to that one girl in the audience who always seems to be in tears when he is performing).  Simon Cowell has said that if Sanjaya wins, he will leave American Idol.  What force of nature is keeping Sanjaya in our lives?!

The answer may be found with a bunch of cynical fans posting on a website called Votefortheworst.com.   As the site's mission statement says, "[American Idol] starts out every year encouraging us to point and laugh at all of the bad singers who audition. We want this hilariously bad entertainment to continue into the finals, so we choose the contestant that we feel provides the most entertaining train wreck performances and we start voting for them." 

During the sixth season, Vote for the Worst has focused their attention on perhaps one of the most hopeless contestants yet with Sanjaya.  His voice is weak, he has a dorky demeanor, and he always seems a bit lost.  Simon's comments about his performances are usually quite hilarious. (My personal favorite: "It was like some ghastly lunch...where after lunch, the parents have asked the children to get up and sing.")  He is, undoubtedly, the worst.  But he has just survived yet another week due to these strangely powerful cynics who are determined to push him to the finals.

I have to say, I respect the idea of voting for the worst in the same way I have a grudging respect for hackers because they want to stick it to The Man.  Of course, as goofy as Sanjaya is, it also seems horribly mean to turn him into a national joke when he could just quietly fade away and move on with his life.

Check out this Sanjaya Mix.